Anatomy of a cover up: How senior police spread the slur that fans were to blame

As
relatives tried to find out if their loved ones were among the dead, the
cover-up was beginning. Senior police enlisted the help of MPs to
spread the slur that fans were to blame. A concerted effort then began
to remove damaging references in frontline officers’ accounts. The
sequence exposed by the report shows:

‘Record your recollections’ The
day after the disaster, April 16, 1989, saw a meeting at which senior
officers discussed how those on duty at the match would need to give
statements.

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Makeshift stretcher: A fan is carried to safety. As relatives tried to find out if their loved ones were dead, a cover up was already beginning

Contrary to
their training, the officers were told not to record their experiences
in their pocket books but to write up ‘recollections’ in their own time
and on their own paper.

By
April 18, four high-ranking officers had given a Sheffield news agency
shocking allegations about fans stealing from dead bodies or sexually
abusing them.

These
accounts – now utterly discredited – were backed up by Sheffield Hallam
MP Sir Irvine Patnick, who had also been briefed by senior officers.
They resulted in The Sun front page story headlined ‘The Truth’.

At a meeting of the South Yorkshire
Police Federation the day the story appeared, the allegations were
repeated, with secretary Paul Middup stressing the importance of getting
the force’s ‘message’ across.

Minutes
detail that then chief constable Peter Wright later joined the meeting,
telling them details of fans’ alleged misbehaviour were crucial because
‘if anybody should be blamed, it should be the drunken ticketless
individuals’.

Statements vetted On
April 29, South Yorkshire Police was told their colleagues at West
Midlands Police, investigating on behalf of Lord Taylor, intended to
pass their notes directly to his official inquiry.

Chief
Superintendent Donald Denton, who oversaw the process for South
Yorkshire Police, agreed that solicitor Mr Metcalf should ‘vet’ them to
remove ‘comment or matters of speculation’.

Mr
Metcalf later advised that criticisms of other officers should also be
removed as these may be accepted by the inquiry without being
cross-examined.

Pleas: Fans were begging Liverpool keeper Bruce Grobbelaar to save them as some died in the crush behind his goal at Hillsborough

Statements rewritten From
May 1989, 164 police statements were amended, 116 of them removing or
altering comments critical of South Yorkshire Police.

The
process involved faxing copies to Mr Metcalf’s firm, Hammond Suddards.
Phrases which were removed included ‘a note of real fear and panic’ in a
senior officer’s voice at the height of the crush, and that
instructions were becoming ‘frantic’.

A
reference to a high-ranking officer sounding ‘extremely agitated and
upset’ was changed to ‘I noticed a sense of urgency in his voice’. Also
deleted were references to senior officers being ‘conspicuous by their
absence’.

One officer
described a constable opening a gate to one of the fatally-packed pens
to relieve the pressure, only to be told to stop by an inspector, but
that he ignored him and ‘people just poured out’.

This
passage was amended to read: ‘I moved along the fence towards a gate
which, once open, people just poured out...’ In one statement, the
officer doing the vetting highlighted a reference to ‘panic and
hysteria’ and noted: ‘I believe he refers to the mood of the fans and
not police management?’

Tribute: Thousands of flowers, wreaths and tributes left on Liverpool's Anfield stadium pitch in memory of the 96 soccer fans who died

999 crew cover-upA total of 17 statements made by staff from South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service were amended to remove criticisms.

One
deleted passage from a crew member read: ‘The access for the ambulances
on to the pitch was pitifully inadequate... obstructions on either
side, compounded by the number of fans in the area, made access
extremely difficult and hazardous.’

Another
deleted passage had stated: ‘I asked [Control] where the casualty
clearing point was. There was a pause and then I was told to go to the
Leppings Lane end... I do not think he knew where the casualty clearing
point was.’

Then chief inspector Norman Bettison, showed a video highlighting disruption by fans, according to the report

‘Black propaganda’ unit Lord
Taylor’s interim report in August 1989 unexpectedly concluded ‘the main
reason for the disaster was the failure in police control’.

However
South Yorkshire officers regarded the verdict as a ‘whitewash’ and
plans for a ‘counter-attack’ began. Working closely with its Federation,
Tony Judge, editor of its journal Police, wrote an article highlighting
how ‘the hooligan element among Liverpool followers’ had been
downplayed.

Also involved
was then chief inspector Norman Bettison, now chief constable of West
Yorkshire, who was part of the Hillsborough Inquiry Team. He showed the
Federation a video highlighting disruption by fans, according to the
report.

Then prior to
the inquests in 1990, chief constable Wright joined the attack,
describing Lord Taylor’s findings as ‘harsh’ and hoping the coroner
would draw different conclusions, particularly over the alleged role of
drunken fans.

Maria Eagle,
MP for Garston and Halewood in Liverpool, branded the process evidence
of a ‘black propaganda’ unit within South Yorkshire Police.

The failed reviewAfter
then Home Secretary Jack Straw asked Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to
investigate the soundness of the inquest verdict, an officer involved in
the case was asked to review the amendments.

Detective
Chief Superintendent Nick Foster, of West Midlands Police, who was not
involved in the vetting, was shown a sample of six amended statements.

He
told the judge he had concerns as to the ‘objectivity’ of the changes,
but Lord Justice Stuart-Smith concluded it had had no bearing on the
police inquiry or the inquest process.

VIDEO: Bettison 'There is nothing that I am ashamed of'

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Hillsborough cover up: How senior police spread the slur that fans were to blame